


--to those who wait

by foundCarcosa



Category: The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can't keep a good man down," they say. Or a good woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	--to those who wait

The fight with the Necromongers had bequeathed him an army. An army he neither wanted nor needed. These creatures stood on ceremony and debased themselves before an unseen force, cowered in numbers but displayed little synergy. They bowed to Riddick’s strength, but he was unconvinced.

He thought of Kyra, and how one of her was worth all of them. How one of her, and one of him, could _kill_ all of them, given enough firepower and darkness.

He grew restless, and that just wouldn’t do. Chains did not have to be tangible or punishing for them to exist, and Riddick did not abide chains.

The difference here was, he could take a ship and leave, and no one would hunt him down.

What was a born warrior in a bloodthirsty universe to do? He found a mark, and took that mark’s life, with the sun at his back, and he made sure every witness saw his eyes before he booked it. And the chase began anew.

Captured, he let himself be thrown into this new cell on this new planet, and waited.

\--------------------------

There was something to be said about every race of sentient beings — the more stringent their society, the more likely there was to be a rebel. This planet did not abide religion, or art, or literature — on this planet, words were used with brevity and not colour. The individual was not a being unto themself, but a cog in the great machine.

There were no prisons on this planet. Its denizens saw Riddick’s worth, and purchased him for a pittance, and set him to work — for everyone worked, man, woman, child; well-mannered citizens worked topside, and the incorrigible worked below.

In the mines, Riddick enjoyed the serenity of a laborious life — hauling, striking, hammering, sweating in the humid dark. The overseer used his eyes to ferret out new deposits, hidden in places where normal eyes wouldn’t see and flashlights would drown out in garish white light. The grime and dust caked into his flesh and became part of him; his hair, unattended, again grew long and unkempt.

And still, he waited.

The society was autocratic, but that was only by name. Sentient beings rarely formed a society without setting someone at its head. Maurice L. Channard held the proverbial whip on this world, living in austere luxury as he commanded the legions that sapped the planet for its every resource, to hoard and marshal out stringently until the planet was depleted. “To survive, take all that can be taken,” Channard was famous for saying, in his clipped and curt tone. “Let others fight wars. We take, and leave, before they even arrive.”

There was no conflict, because any dissenter would simply be killed where they stood, and work would resume. No dissenters, save for Channard’s own flesh, his heir to the scavenger dynasty.

Miriam could not be mollified. She was self-aware and eternally curious, unwilling to be placated by the simple, bland pleasures of her life as heir; her father’s words did not move her, nor did she appreciate his blind philosophy. But she was cunning, and in Channard’s self-assured complacency, he did not realise that she had taught herself to rappel down the side of the stronghold, aided by the angular architecture, down to the surface where the miners toiled deep within the ground.

Ever curious, she used the shadows to weave her way into the mines, ignored by the workers who had grown to expect nothing out of the ordinary and wouldn’t have recognised her for extraordinary even if they had seen her.

Drones. Every one of them. Hacking at the earth, carving it away, hoarding its resources for a lifeless race that failed to evolve past hunting and gathering.

"But we are not insects," Miriam whispered harshly to herself, disturbed by the constant grinding and hammering that beat into her skull like a command.

"Aren’t we?" a voice answered, mockingly.

Miriam nearly spilled from her watching place into the depths below her, startled. A worker crouched behind her, shadowed, nondescript.

"Never seen you before."

"How would you know?" Miriam shot back, her shock swiftly switching to defense. "You can’t tell yourself from others."

"But _you_ can.”

He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared, merging with the line of workers hauling ore to the smelter. But she’d seen his eyes — gleaming in the gritty dimness, like diamond.

\--------------------------

She looked for him again, as he knew she would. If she had the presence of mind to recognise herself as different, then she would know him as well. Like attracted like. Kyra would have understood.

Nothing changed, at first. Riddick worked, hauling, scraping, hammering, smelting, his body comfortable with the work, his mind comfortable with the opportunity to ruminate. Where the other workers’ eyes went blank and dull under the tedium of hard labour, their brains ground to a halt, Riddick continued to thrive, like clockwork, the machinery of his brain ever-ticking, waiting, waiting.

He saw her at times, a flash of colour that didn’t belong down here, a proverbial salmon swimming upstream amongst a sea of minnows swimming downstream, and that was enough for him.

He waited.

\--------------------------

They were given time to sleep, and recharge, and it was then that Miriam slipped into the mines, shoeless and quiet as a cat, feeling her way down by touch and sound rather than by sight, having learnt and learnt well. Her brain felt alive, thrumming with activity, and she rejoiced in this rebellion, this freedom that she’d won for herself.

She found the cells where the miners slept, mere capsules, not the sumptuous pods she knew of from living topside, equipped with binaural resonance and climate control and vitals monitors. Stark grime-caked capsules shoved into rock, first-come first-served, and here, here was the diamond-eyed man, this capsule, it had to be him.

Quietly, she released the airlock.

It is a moment, a tense moment, before he opens his eyes and confirms his identity. The silver-grey eyes trained on her, and immediately narrowed.

"This better be good."

Words stuck in her throat. She had no plan in coming here, no prepared speech to deliver to him. She didn’t know what to say, except that…

"You don’t belong here."

"No shit." Riddick pushed himself upright with a grunt, eyes swivelling to take in the still-sealed capsules around him. No one else in sight, just them. Drones didn’t require security. They had no initiative.

"So, you’re gonna break me out? How?" RIddick trained his eyes on the girl — woman, he’d say, now that they were face-to-face, but small for her age, like Kyra — and took her measure. "What are you, the king’s daughter? Tired of life in the palace? Looking for a knight in dirty cargos to give you a life of adventure?"

"You could have left." His words confuse her, too many at once, indirect, alluding to something she didn’t understand. "Easy to escape. Only need mind. Consciousness. Why did you stay?"

Riddick smirked, shrugged. Gave her a lazy once-over. “Liked the view.”

"This life, pointless. Want freedom. You want freedom too. Let’s go."

"Not so fast, pretty lady. You got a plan? Supplies? A ship? What’s the climate like up there, anything I need to know about? You see, I don’t see so well in the daytime." He cocked his head, noting her twitching hands, furrowed brow. Tension in her neck and shoulders, under the severe garments. "You in a hurry to get somewhere?"

"Work alarm soon. Must leave now."

Riddick had met a lot of strange people in his time, but maybe this one took the cake. She was years of restraint and impatience coiled tight in a small, quick body, a ticking time bomb that Riddick wasn’t sure he could trust not to go off at the wrong time. But this wasn’t the time for thought, this was the time for instinct, and if he was going to act, he needed to act. He _hadn’t_ come to this planet to die in a mine, after all, another unnamed worker in a fatalistic colony.

"To the surface," he confirmed, holding her gaze as her body strained to run. 

"The surface," she repeated, her voice vibrating with intensity, "The ship. Then, the sky."

—

The alarm sounded as Riddick and Miriam darted through the tunnels, and below them capsules hissed and steamed and opened, releasing their captives, but Riddick and Miriam kept to the shadows and moved like water, quiet and fluid, guided by touch and sound as the mines roared to cacophonous life.

A missing worker would go unnoticed to this lot, to the overseers and the foremen; one cog missing down here was easily ignored as long as the machine still turned. But topside, Maurice L. Channard was furious, for his routine had been unpleasantly ruined by the absence of one Miriam Channard, scurrying with Riddick far below his feet.

"Where is she?" he shouted, spittle flying, fists clenched, but all of the minds of the men around him were used to taking direction rather than giving it, and had no insight of their own.

The miners below flowed ever downstream, and did not notice Riddick and the ruler’s daughter, working steadily towards daylight.

—

"What planet is this?" 

"No one knows," Miriam answered. They hunkered beyond the hatch, Riddick squinting out at the horizon and Miriam sweeping the perimeter. "It is not a world. Simply a mine. Take, then leave."

"Stupid way to live," Riddick commented idly. "Where’s the ship?"

"There. The frigate. Ship ore to other planet, make weapons, make ships, make armada."

"How to take over the universe for lazy tyrants, one-oh-one," Riddick said dryly. "So saying we make it there without getting shot down, how are we going to get that tin can off this rock? You know how to fly?"

"No. You do." She held his gaze.

"Glad to see you did your research. Pardon me for not having done the same, I was… preoccupied.  
And then where do we go? You know anything about this big bad universe other than this rock?”

"No. I learn. This is no life. Whatever happens up there, my choice. And yours."

Riddick’s lips twitched. “Dumbest thing I’ve ever done, getting sprung by someone who needs rescuing more than I do.  
Guess that’s why I’m doing it.”

Under the light of a distant sun, Riddick and Miriam headed towards the ship as her father and his useless council headed away from it, and in a ship just out of orbit Commander Vaako waits, with infinite patience.


End file.
